


Puzzled

by orphan_account



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Bullying, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, POV Second Person, Reader is foreign, References to Depression, Romance, Slow Burn, There's a playlist for the story in the Wattpad version, no y/n
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:27:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16912038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A puzzle only the bullied transfer student can solve, but seemingly can't convince to solve. Could the starving artist convince them to solve it, or will he only create a puzzle for himself to solve?





	1. 第一章

**A** buzz alerted Akira Kurusu as he was walking through the crowded hallways of his prestigious high school Shujin Academy, he then walked close to the wall to avoid the distracted members of the crowd bumping into him. He pulled out his phone from his uniform's plaid pockets. He read the white text from the orange icon showing Mishima.

"Hey, there's this request about a girl in our school. She manipulates her peers to do her work and treats others poorly!" The text read. Akira couldn't believe how many people were bullies, it truly shows how easy humans can be psychologically warped to believe themselves higher than people their own age. It's truly disgusting, and that's what responded to the text with.

"Right! Her name is Itsumi Matsuda. Some of her victims include first-year Karin Ueda, third-year Ryosuke Sugiyama .." and the text ended with the name of the second year foreign exchange student. Akira couldn't remember where they were from, but it was somewhere that spoke English. It made sense why they would be bullied, having no friends early in the year so they'd be easy to build up with the hope of friendship only to be used and have their self-esteem broken.

"We'll handle it." Was all Akira wrote back, but that was just the way he was; a man of little words. He didn't need to check his phone for a text back as he knew Mishima would be happy with his answer. Akira put his gray-cased phone back into his pocket as he stepped away from the wall and back into the busy mob.


	2. 第二章

**Akira** met up with his four friends and teammates Ryuji Sakamoto, Ann Takamaki, Yusuke Kitagawa, and Makoto Niijima in the Shibuya walkway. Makoto looked uncomfortable as she stood next to Ann who was leaning over the railing to look through the window of the walkway, and Yusuke stood observing the occupants of the walkway in hopes of new inspiration, and Ryuji who squatted a few feet above the ground.

"What are we doin' today?" Ryuji asked as he watched Akira move to stand in between him and Ann.

"We got a request," Akira said curtly, then Morgana popped out of his unzipped school bag. "A student from Shujin called Itsumi Matsuda has been manipulating other students to do her work," Morgana added.

"You know, we probably don't need to change her heart, I'm sure I could just warn her of her actions and their consequences," Makoto suggested with her eyes closed, seeming pleased with her suggestion.

"But will she really change her ways?" Yusuke glared. Makoto's eyes snapped open and as soon as her eyes met Yusuke's she immediately averted her eyes and lowered her head. "...Probably not." She mumbled.

"I don't do most of my work, but at least I'm honest about it. Let's take her down." Ryuji agreed, with a determined, lop-sided smile plastered on his features.

"I agree with Ryuji! Just do your own work!" Ann added and started to fidget in her place, shifting her bare legs' positions and playing with the hem of her jacket tied to her slim waist; she was clearly impatient to go to the Mementos.

Yusuke hadn't agreed yet. He still was uncomfortable with topics of someone being used as it reminded him of bad memories with Madareme, despite how common of an issue, he couldn't stand his weakness; living with a man who craved nothing more than his talent, to use for money! It was disgusting to Yusuke that his sensei had even once claimed his mother's masterpiece as his own when  _ he _ tainted it; he erased the baby his mother cradled, him. Though despite his bad memories, he felt happy to help others who felt as powerless in their situation as he did. "Yusuke? Why do you think?" Ann asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Oh...yes...Let's do it." He hoped his voice didn't betray how disconnected he felt right now. Just remembering his situation caused a damper in his mood.

"Then it's settled, let's go!" Morgana announced.

Akira's thumb opened the Metaverse application and typed Mementos in the search bar, and with a hazy, ill feeling that left them with blurry, red, vision. Their clothing changed from their normal summer school uniform(though it wasn't very  _ uniform _ anymore) into the outfits composed by their inner representation of what a rebel looks like to them. They were met with the overgrown, manifested subway of deep wine reds and details of black.

xxx

"Can we go back yet?" Panther groaned from the red backseat of Mona's bus form, her chin rested on her arms that were folded at the top of the combined driver and passenger seat Joker and Queen were seated in. "It should be here... I don't know what's happenin' this time.." Skull murmured from beside her.

"I still can't sense her presence..." Mona moaned tiredly, they had been circling the same level for at least the third time in the hour.

"Why don't we go to a safe room and try to figure this out there?" Fox suggested, to which the others agreed and Queen spun the steering wheel and did a U-turn on the bumpy, endless railroads, and swerved around the road attempting to avoid any enemies that would charge or coward at them. After she traveled a few levels she finally reached the glass resting area they used as a safe room. Everyone climbed out of the car and then Mona shifted back into his cat form. Joker stood at the top of

"Mona! Why isn't it working this time?!" Skull demanded, frustration invading his features.

"I don't, numb-Skull! Don't bring this down on me!" Mona fired back.

"Why not?! You're the one who knows the most about this stuff!" Skull defended his argument.

"I don't know everything! I barely know who I am!"

Panther roller her eyes as the bickering continued, her crystal blue eyes flickered through the faces of her teammates; Joker seemed to be lost in thought, Fox was gazing at the passing by train, Skull and Mona were arguing...her eyes then landed on Queen. Her usual calm, orderly demeanor was replaced by a frightened and worried expression, her masked, sunset red irises weren't peering in frustration at the bickering idiots in front of her, instead, they were directed at her trembling hands in her lap.

"Be quiet!" Panther yelled, standing up from the seat she was lazily sat in, catching the attention of all her teammates. They all looked at her expecting a scolding of their behavior from her, to their surprise she turned her gaze to Queen and proceeded to a soft, gentle tone that completely contrasted her previous one, "Queen, what's the matter?"

"...What if her shadow isn't here, because..." They already knew what she was going to say. "she has a palace instead?" Queen finished. After her sentence, there was a silence promptly broken by Joker, "Let's go back and see if we get a hit." He commanded. It was shocking for his teammates to hear him say a sentence that wasn't composed of two to three words.

After a tap on an icon on the Metaverse app with Joker's thumb, the walls and floors of the area shifted between railroads on the floor and ceiling or flat surfaces on the walls and floors until the room finished shifting into the entrance of the Mementos. Joker's thumb pressed another icon on the app that caused the familiar hazy feeling to occur. Once their blurred vision returned to normal and the hues of red surrendered their invasion of the color spectrum they saw they were back at their hideout in Shibuya. The app thanked them for their hard work once they entered into "reality", and Makoto, who was still not accustomed to the effects of the Metaverse sat down on the cold tile of the subway. Akira, who was the quickest to recover, was already entering the name of their newest target in the search bar.

" **Target Found** "


	3. 第三章

**The** train was stopped temporarily in its tracks, a fact you felt bittersweet about, you would get more time to finish your homework, but you would arrive home a little bit later you wanted. Your workload seemed to never end with double the work to do at night, one problem after another until Itsumi's work was complete, some nights you couldn't finish your own because of Itsumi's work being more difficult than yours, as she was in harder classes than you due to her work always being perfect and turned in on time. Whereas your work was messily written and often forgot important details due to your fatigue and stress. Itsumi had made a few other students do her work as well, but she used you the most since she knew she had broken you down enough to the point where you couldn't refuse or do anything about it.   
  
Yusuke had noticed another student from Shujin on his train, they had been working on a small stack of school assignments since before the train left. His friends normally never had a stack of papers to complete, not even Makoto, who was in higher and harder classes than his friends, not mention she was the student council president. Yusuke decided to walk up to them and express his concerns about their workload.   
  
"Excuse me, I noticed your workload. I have friends that go to Shujin and they never receive this much." The student looked up, the first thing he noticed about them was their unfamiliar features that clearly looked foreign. A surge of panic raced through Yusuke's mind as he feared he had walked up to a tourist that just happened to wear plaid clothing unknowingly, though, to his surprise, they responded in fluent Japanese. "O-oh, I must be in harder classes than them then." You lied. Yusuke's initial panic was cleared after he heard that and proceeded to study the rest of their features for a second before responding. Prominent features were the deep lavender semi-circles underneath bloodshot eyes and the corners of their lips curved into a small frown.   
  
He opened his mouth to respond, but you knew by his unsatisfied expression that he was going to press you for more answers. "If you haven't noticed, I'm trying to do my work. Please stop bothering me. You passive-aggressively interrupted, a sweet smile contrasting your words dripping with venom. You didn't want to be rude to the man, but you've realized you can't let anyone find out about Itsumi's cheating, who knows what she would do to you this time.   
  
Yūsuke was in shock after their outburst, without another word, he returned back to where he was previously standing on the stopped train and pulled out his light blue-cased phone from the pocket of his black dress pants, and his slender thumb proceeded to tap the IM icon and started a new group chat with his teammates.   
  
"Do students who are taking harder classes normally receive a stack of work at Shujin?" The light blue portrait of his profile picture appeared with the black cartoonish speak bubble.   
  
"No, it's normally just two to three pages. Why do you ask?" The purple portrait of Makoto repeated her typed words.   
  
"I saw a student on the train trying to complete a small stack. They looked very tired."   
  
"Can you describe them? Maybe I know who they are."   
  
Yusuke answered describing the features of the student, his most prominent detail being that they looked foreign. Makoto replied with the name and country they were from. Akira chimed in after Makoto, simply stating, "That's one of the students Itsumi uses."   
  
The conversation was rapid after that.   
  



	4. 第四章

**After** his last class (which was mostly spent on reading due to Kawakami's distraction) he hastily texted Ryuji, Ann, and Makoto to help him get information on the three students. They basically had to force out any information they could get from the frightened students, which was where you were now, sitting in the student council room while being interrogated by Ann Takamaki, though all of her questions you refused to answer.   
  
"So did you get any information, Ann?" Makoto asked her. They had decided to gather at their hideout and share the information they got, as they waited for Yusuke to arrive.   
  
"She refused. Did you guys?"   
  
"The guy I asked gave me loads, he had a lot to rant about!" Ryuji clamored, the familiar lop-sided smile present on his face.   
  
"We need two more keywords, let's start with the location," Makoto stated.   
  
"She makes them do her schoolwork, so maybe it's the school? Like Kamoshida's was." Ryuji suggested. "It's worth a shot." Akira looked down at his phone that was opened on the Metaverse app to see that Ryuji's guess was correct, "We got a hit!" Ann cheered when she saw the phone screen light up.   
  
"We just need the distortion. Ryuji, what did he say?" Ann asked, not able to contain her excitement, causing a few of passerby to glare at her loudness.   
  
"He said she acts like she's so smart and sweet, and she's nice to the people she uses when there's people she wants to impress around."   
  
"Maybe it's like an idol? She has an act that she uses in front of people, or on stage at a concert, but she's not really who they think." Ann excitedly suggested. "We got a hit," Akira announced.   
  
"Woah! For real?!" Ryuji exclaimed, causing passerby's to glare in their direction again.   
  
"Should we go there today?" Ann queried.   
  
"Let's wait till tomorrow. We just left the school and Yusuke still isn't here." Makoto announced. Ryuji pulled out his yellow-cased phone from his pocket, "Ugh, sorry guys...my mom needs me back home. Let's kick ass tomorrow!" Ryuji groaned and ran off after giving a lazy wave.    
  
"I should go too, I'll let Yusuke know about our progress. See you all tomorrow." Makoto stated, then waved to the small group and blended into the busy crowd of tired students and hard-working people.    
  
"I'm gonna stay here for a bit, I'll be at the underground mall if you need me." And with that Ann walked off after waving to Akira. After she left, he adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and walked off to do God knows what.    



	5. Chapter 5

**Akira** and his teammates met up in an alleyway outside of Shujin. "Are we all ready?" Akira asked his bespectacled eyes flickering through the determined faces of his allies.   
  
"Hell yeah!" Ryuji exclaimed before the others could even open their mouths to respond. The others shouted with exclamations of determination.   
  
"Let's do this," Akira announced curtly then pressed the icon to enter the corrupt and unholy world. The hazy feeling soon returned to their beings as they shifted to the warped manifestation of the school they had seen previously with Kamoshida’s cognition. Once they arrived they felt the warmth and movement of many other bodies around them, only to see that they were standing in a crowd of adoring fans excitedly murmuring the name "Itsumi", some humming the tune of a generic J-Pop song, and wearing shirts with Itsumi's face plastered on them.   
  
The crowd started to move forward towards the stage, all of them desperate to be at the very front, pushing and shoving whoever was in the way, just to get there.

  
"Hey!"   
  
"Stop pushing me!"   
  
"Ow!"   
  
Complaints permeated the air, though they were quickly forgotten when Itsumi's voice rang through the speakers on the intensely lit stage.   
  
"Are you guy's ready?!" All of the cognitive people in the crowd cheered. Electronic pop started blasting through the speakers and the crowd cheered and screamed when Itsumi ran center stage in time for when she had to start singing the carbon copy of any real love song. Instead of her normal black hair it was dyed a caramel brown, while her outfit consisted of a plain white short-sleeved shirt paired with the Shujin uniform skirt, though the crimson red of the plaid skirt was now a deep pink, matching the deep pink and light blue lighting. As soon as the chorus began, backup dancers dimly lit by the lights, soon entered from backstage and started to repeat the dance Itsumi was leading.   
  
Within the small group of backup dancers, Fox noticed you, but it wasn't the person he noticed on the train; you looked like you could pass out any moment, your clothes and hair were messily done, but most notably your expression was so dull. Lips carved into what seemed a permanent frown and the sensitive skin around your eyes were red and puffy as if you had been crying.   
  
The sight saddened Fox, it reminded him of the way he was before he discovered the truth about Madarame. He realized then that he could help though like him, despite his own painful memories of the past he could prevent others from having similar memories of their own.   
  
"Shit! I looked right at the light..." Skull exclaimed, earning a few glares from the fans who only wanted to hear Itsumi's voice, and breaking Fox out of his determined thoughts.   
  
"While she's distracted we could try to find the treasure, I sense it's presence nearby so this palace shouldn't be very large or challenging. This should take only a few days." Mona suggested. "There's a door over there," Panther pointed to a door that led behind the stage. "let's try that first." She finished.   
  
There didn't appear to be any security guards, so they hurried to backstage in hopes no one would find it odd they were there. Behind the door were the same people that were the backup dancers on front stage, Fox tried to find you in the sea of clones, and sure enough, he did. The only difference between the version that was dancing on stage were the clothes that were still messily put on.   
  
"These are..." Queen started.   
  
"All of the people she uses." Joker finished, a hint of disappointment infiltrating his features.   
  
"This is eff'd up..." Skull mumbled, to which Panther agreed.   
  
"Let's just get this over with." Fox commanded.   
  
None of the clones payed attention to their group as they were too preoccupied and tired to notice. There seemed to be one door in crowded room, a large golden star with "Itsumi" engraved in it. The team walked up the door that caught their eyes and were met with a padlock on the door handle, except there were no numbers or letters to press, just jumbled letters and squiggles.   
  
"Uh, any idea how we're suppose to do this?" Skull asked, confusion etched in his expression.   
  
"These aren't symbols or words that exist." Queen murmured.   
  
"The crew isn't attacking us, maybe we could try talking to them?" Panther suggested, the others agreed and split up to talk to one of the clones. It was almost impossible to get their attention, and if they were able to ask them a question they always refused.   
  
"They're not listening!" Mona exclaimed after another failure.   
  
"If they do respond they refuse." Fox added.   
  
"Maybe we'd have to use one of them from the real world?" Queen suggested, her voice laced with panic.   
  
"You mean, like, bring 'em here?" Skull queried using hand gestures as he asked. His eyes were wide in shock.   
  
"...Yes." Queen mumbled.   
  
"Maybe we'd have to use the one who gets the most work from Itsumi." Panther added, she then added your name, stating that when she interrogated you, you had another stack of papers in your hands.   
  
"Plus, there's more clones of them than anyone else here." Mona added sadly.   
  
It was settled, they'd have to find a way to solve the impossible with your help.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)
> 
> This is also on my Wattpad: Corbin_Azure
> 
> I own nothing but this story. Persona 5 is owned byAtlus© and P-Studio©.


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